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Buckle your seatbelts. ?
-Chapter 26, DGM-
Within two seconds, Lund had already arrived at the bottom of the ramparts. Hefting the thick cord of rope, he tugged and begin his ascent.
Even as he scaled the walls, archers showered arrows upon him. Above him, defenders diligently hurled boulders down the walls in a hopeful attempt to deter him.
Lund detested their efforts.
Lund could ignore the arrow shafts, but the boulders plunging down weighed at least several hundred kilograms. They were a thorny problem. If one boulder even connected, it would be extremely unpleasant, to say the least. However, Lund had a solution to this problem.
As a boulder plummeted down the ramparts, the scarlet sword in his hand flickered in the air. “Break!” He scowled. A blur of glaring crimson streaked through the air, cleaving a crescent curve over half a meter wide. The crescent curve streaked over 10 meters forward, shearing through the boulder like hot butter. The two halves of the boulder over half a meter thick each plummeted past Lund.
It did not stop there. The crescent curve sliced cleanly through the air, cleaving through the defenders dropping the boulders. Blood splattered as their figures were divided. Lund sped up the wall as he neared the 30 meter mark of the ramparts.
“Projecting warrior qi?!”
“What level is he at?!”
“How do we block that?!”
The human defenders on the walls were horrified by the battle skill Lund had displayed. The consternated gazes of a few warriors among them brimmed with despair as they realised a conclusion for the war had been reached.
Minsk was still tangled in deadlock with the level 4 dark elf general. His comrade rushed over in a bid to assist him, but was halted by the fierce resistance of the dark elf soldiers streaming from behind the general. Minsk had no choice but to fight solo.
When he spotted the glaring crimson crescent cleave through the boulder, his pupils contracted as his heart hammered frantically against his chest. “Is this our end?”
Annie was at a different location on the ramparts, assisting three other suicide squad members in fending off a dark elf general. When she glimpsed the warrior qi projected from Lund, she mentally rewrote her death will in her heart. Ignoring her safety, she assaulted her opponent as if ballistic.
She was well aware that even with the assistance of the suicide squad, holding off the dark elf marshal with just their powers was far, far insufficient. The only thing left to do was to stake everything on the line just to stall for a little more time.
On the contrary, dark elf soldiers were a different story. Witnessing the tyrannical strength of their commander, morale increased rapidly. Their attacks became progressively aggressive and daring.
Up to this juncture, everything had sailed along smoothly with Lund’s anticipations.
Yet his expectations were shattered for the second time that hour.
A dense glow of cerulean radiated from the archer tower on the ramparts.
The cerulean glow had started out inconspicuous and had went unnoticed. However, it quickly grew into a scorching sphere of light. Under the blanket of the night, it burned like the sun itself, illuminating the skies in its glory.
In the next moment, the light was expelled from the archer tower; a shaft of cerulean bolting across the night sky in a brilliant arc.
It was too bright; too fast.
It seared a blistering line of light onto the retinas of everyone who watched it, like lightning forking streaks of electricity in the horizons. Black splotches emerged in the vision of anybody who glimpsed it.
The light stabbed at Marshal Lund who was in the midst of scaling the wall.
“Huh? What’s that?”
The light was entirely out of his expectations, and was also shot at the right opportunity – promptly after Lund had condensed his warrior qi into an attack. Lund was unable to condense his warrior qi immediately again to launch another attack to parry the light.
In the next instant, a shaft of brilliance pierced through his figure.
“BOOOM!”
A ear-splitting explosion rent the entire battlefield. The hit of the bolt sent intense heatwaves roiling over the battlefield. In this moment, the heavens and earth were shuddering.
The world seemed to rumble with terror.
The discharge of the bolt of light had blinded the entire city. For a moment, it was daytime.
Reeling against the earthshaking attack, Lund’s body instinctively went into overdrive, exploding with warrior qi.
Warrior qi was a warrior’s staple. It supplied them with tremendous strength and agility. Although the boost of defence against physical attacks was not substantial, it posed an enormous resistance against magic.
Lund was a level 6 warrior. If there was one thing he had in abundance, it was warrior qi. It easily blocked the attack of the bolt. Unlike Lund, the rest of the dark elves were roasted like coke in a blast furnace when the heatwaves were sent reeling.1 A number were instantly vaporised.
However, the heatwave of the bolt was not sole terrifying part of it.
Caught in the ground zero of the explosion, Lund felt himself blasted by a mighty force, something beyond the resistance of humans. Furthermore, the effect was twofold as Lund was suspended in the air by the rope latched onto the ramparts.
This was a thermal explosion, caused by the violent displacement of the swelled air. The shock wave swept across the battlefield, leaving only destruction in its wake.2
‘Flame burst'(炎爆), the high temperature was merely denoted by the first word ‘flame'(炎). The dreadful explosion was instead taken from the second word ‘burst'(爆).3
Lund was in the epicentre of the explosion. Even if his body had exceptional vitality and his equipment had copious resistance against magic, it would be taxing to block an attack on this scale.
Lund felt like his five viscera and six bowels4 had shifted positions as a wave of nausea swept through his aching body.
He was injured.
Under the powerful explosion, his entire figure was blasted away like a ragdoll. He flew airborne for over 30 meters before he finally dented the ground.
Dust sprang up from the ground. Where his body lay had a huge cavity. From the deep indentation, the impact of the force could be inferred to be, without hyperbole, outright terrifying.
The winner of the bout between magic and warrior qi had been settled. Against a boosted level 4 magic spell, a level 6 warrior’s qi had lost.
Why was this so?5
Elementary. In Feloma continent, the magicians dominated warriors due to the destructive scale of their spells.
A magician’s spell employed both the caster’s mana and the borrowed elemental power of nature. ‘Element remedy’ was an elemental magic spell. It gathered elements from the surroundings and turned it into nutrients for the body. ‘Secondary hailstorm’ was a summoning magic spell, as it simply summoned a hailstorm for combat.6
‘Flame burst’ was classified as an elemental magic spell. During the casting process, mana would first construct the magical structure of the spell. The magic structure would then attract the fire elements in its surroundings, which constituted the condensed fireball of high temperature.
Magic and nature complimented each other perfectly. Hence, they could launch attacks of epic proportions.
However, warriors could only rely on the warrior qi within their bodies to attack.
A man borrowing the power of nature versus a man relying on himself. The former would naturally be more superior.
If a magician and a warrior competed with power, a warrior’s qi would be quickly depleted while the magician would still have plenty of mana after casting a few spells.
Therefore, a level 4 magic spell ‘flame burst’, could force a level 6 warrior to expend a third of his warrior qi just blocking it.
Indeed – it was unfair, but the world was unfair.
Magician relied on knowledge to fight, and knowledge was power. Knowledge gave rise to magic, just as magic was derived from knowledge. Omniscience was considered the peak of existence. Hence, by wielding knowledge as a weapon, magic became the most dreaded form of power on Feloma continent.
Lund was an extremely determined person. Although he knew he was injured, he knew could not show even a hint of weakness in front of his men. Hence, he dragged his body up onto his feet.
“Which magician uses such a cowardly method!?”
He roared, apoplectic. His wounds, evidently, were not heavy.
At the same time, he scanned the ramparts. However, he could not help but withdraw involuntarily at the sight of the tragic scene that lay before him. His pupils contracted
The fight had been going without a hitch just before, so there were at least a thousand dark elf soldiers assembled beneath the ramparts, ready to scale it. When ‘flame burst’ was cast, these dark elf soldiers were caught in the blast radius.
These were all normal soldiers without warrior qi. Their bodies merely had more vitality than the average joe. Against a heavily reinforced level 4 magic spell, they could not even muster an ounce of resistance.
The searing temperature of the ramparts could be felt even from this distance. The scene began with at least three hundred charred bodies lying beneath the ramparts. As Lund’s gaze travelled further, he could see blackened limbs collapsing into ashes before being carried away by the wind. They were remnants of soldiers that had not been vaporised along with their main bodies.
The Blood Hand Demon had a rigid temperament, but his body had begun to shiver faintly despite the blistering heat.
He had came with 20,000 people, and 300 were gone in a blink. The simple deduction of the figures were slightly inconceivable, despite the scene that lay before him.
At this moment, he glimpsed the figure of the magician that had ambushed him. Even now, the magician stood on the archer tower, continuously casting spells. Beads of blue fireballs ceaselessly shot out from his staff.
Every fireball that he discharged would generate an explosion of flame exceeding over half a meter in diameter.7 Every shot easily claimed a dark elf soldier’s life.
Lund recognised the magic staff in a single glance.
“It’s Holm’s fire crystal magic staff! This is that young magician who had tried to escape! But how could he have such terrifying power at such a young age?” Holm could not comprehend the scene before him.
Although magicians were powerful, they spent decades just learning and honing their craft. In the silver moon legislative assemble, all the powerful magicians were old hags. Every one of them, without exception, was at least past his middle age.
This young magician was only a level 2 magician at most. However, this was a level where only the most talented among the talented could accomplish. That bolt of magic he casted before could rival a level 5 magic spell. Furthermore, the scope of its power bypassed the epitome of ‘scary’ by several times.
How was this possible?
While Lund was baffled for a few seconds, another dozen dark elf soldiers fell to the enemy’s fireballs. The miserable shrieks immediately brought Lund back to his senses.
Looking at his enemy perched on the city walls and his practically boundless mana, his mind suddenly became clear. If Glaston city was to fall, then this magician had to fall along with it!
Fortunately, his wounds were not heavy, and his vitality was shocking. Within half a minute, his body had made a full recovery. The only problem was that he had depleted over half of his warrior qi just resisting the shot. Half a minute was insufficient in recovering an amount like this.
However, even with the handicap of only half his warrior qi, he had confidence in slaying this magician.
Previously, he was just careless. This time, he would go serious with no holds barred.
-On the ramparts-
With the assistance of the fireballs, Minsk had successfully slain the level 4 dark elf general. He stared at Link still perched on the archer tower, stupefied.
“When did the Kingdom gain such a young but terrifying magician?”
Wasn’t that spell just now ‘flame burst’? Minsk was not too sure, because the strength it had displayed overshadowed the normal ‘flame burst’ by far.
Annie also spotted Link. Looking at him easily casting spells, she was pleasantly surprised. Her eyes reddened as they widened. “He’s still alive! He came back to help!”
The human soldiers on the ramparts were pleasantly surprised too. World-shaking magic must have a world-shaking magician, and he was on their side. He had sent the dark elf marshal flying in one move. They had finally grasped a thread of hope!
On the contrary, the dark elves were alarmed and anxious. Their commander had been sent flying while a few hundred were fried with just one spell.
Don’t even mention the dark elves climbing the ramparts; more than half of them had begun to flee helter-skelter. The dark elves on the ramparts did not even hesitate in breaking a few bones by leaping off the ramparts to flee.
The only dark elves left persevering on the wall were the level 4 dark elf generals. However, they were cautioned against the attacks of Link, and had begun to go on the defensive.
Seeing the morale of the dark elves plummet, Lund roared again, “Warriors, keep away from the magician and disperse!”
His voice boomed like thunder. Warrior qi began to envelop his figure as his crimson radiance grew denser and denser.
His speed reached a terrifying velocity as he started sprinting, rapidly approaching the archer tower Link was on.
“Attack!”
-Chapter 26, end-
Ok this shit was epic, and I tried my best to portray it so
The word count also reached epic proportions ;-; just like the fight scenes. I personally edited this chapter myself e.e
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